Glenbow Archives, RCT Turner Valley Oral History Project, Mike Schintz, interviewed by David Finch, April 22, 1991

Transcription

1 Glenbow Archives, RCT Turner Valley Oral History Project, Mike Schintz, interviewed by David Finch, April 22, 1991 Tape 1 Side 1 Biographical information about Mike Schintz. He was born in Montreal in His mother and father met on the boat on the way over from Europe. Her name was Janet Dean Kay and his name was Theodore Marie Schintz. She owned and drove a motorcycle in England. Ted was from Holland. 025 Until Ted was forty years old, he got an income from the family clothing business in Holland. He was an artist and studied at the Academy of Art in Munich. 040 Mike's first recollections were of life in a small town in Holland where he learned Dutch as his first language. Ted applied to emigrate to Canada in 1938 and he was accepted due to an agricultural course that he took. He had visited the southwestern Alberta area on a previous trip and bought the land on the Highwood River. 065 Mike remembered when WWII broke out. It was the rodeo time of the year and the family had travelled to the Black Diamond fair grounds through the Coal Coulee by horse and wagon. The announcement of the war bothered Mike very much but he did not know exactly why. The income from Holland ended with the arrival of the war. The property on the Highwood cost $710. Ted tried to make a living as an artist during the war. He took work for Raymond Patterson or others. Men with a team were paid $5.00 per day or $2 to $3 without a team. The painting career finally broke Ted's health. Sometimes, Mike and Janet had to pull Ted out of the studio after dark. They moved into High River in later years. 115 Janet was a fine wife and mother. She was a good artist, self-taught. She wrote and illustrated children's books. Some of the material remain for books she never finished and Mike wants to finish them. She was a very busy person but she still found time to paint. 150 Brother David is dead and brother Nicholas lives in British Columbia. Nicholas went into the house building business just as the boom collapsed his business. He and Mike co-owned the "Old Place" on the Highwood so when the bank went after money to repay Nicholas' debts, they sold the family place. Two men who Mike knew, Paul Dennis and Albert Kinlock, bought out Nicholas' share and finally Mike sold out to the partners. The property is 69 acres. 200 Ted had horses on the land but would not have a cow. Mike had a herd of goats and he supplied the family with cream, milk and cheese. 220 The war did not affect them very much. Some years they only went to Longview twice a year, for groceries. They filled the wagon box with groceries for $ Longview was the big trip. The town was very similar to the way it is today. 250 The next section is a bit noisy with background noise as we were driving down the road, south towards Longview. Christmas was a special time of year and each child expected one thing from the Eaton's catalogue. All the other gifts were home made. Special events were always done up with great effect. Story of Halloween. Description of the Christmas decorations. 300

2 The flares were really noticeable. Ted said he could see a few flares when he first came to the south end in 1933 when he first saw the area. A trip to High River was a very big event. They stayed with Tom Benton, the station master, in High River. The water wagon still went up and down the streets in High River, selling water to each residence. The Longview Hotel ran out of water in the afternoon on hot summer days. The hotel was not very rowdy. They parked the team and wagon behind the hotel. A room at the hotel was about $ The first family motorized vehicle was a 1947 Willy's Jeep. (It still runs and we went for a drive in it that afternoon.) Ivan Clark was the mailman from High River and he always got through with a Willy's Jeep. Story about the first Jeep that Ted bought. It was yellow and on the way home from Longview in ran off the road and into a field. Ted went back into town and told them where to find the yellow Jeep and he ordered a red one in its place. Ted always said that the Jeep was no good because it was yellow. 485 The Twin Cities Hotel in Longview is similar to how he remembers it. A garage, similar to the one in Black Diamond across from the hotel, stood at the northeast corner of the intersection of the road north to Black Diamond and east to High River. The general store was run by the Gallup brothers. Barney's was a coffee shop. Morrison was the druggist and his store was at the southeast corner of the intersection. The store offered large ice cream cones and Mike got one cone per year. East on the road to High River was the store, confectionary and coffee shop run by Tom Kee. Tom, upon encountering the winter weather, bought a pair of long underwear. When it began to wear out he bought another pair and just put them on top. When Mike knew him he was wearing about four layers of the long underwear. Mike, Johnny Fitzherbert and Joe Dayment patronized Tom because he sold them Vogue tobacco before they could buy it legally. At Christmas, he slipped them each a cigar. 570 The other Chinaman in Longview was Barney. 580 A large piece of pipe served as a hitching rail in downtown Longview. The horses spooked on day and pulled the pipe out of the ground and somehow managed to poke it through the plate glass window of Morrison's Drugstore. "So I said to Dad, 'Does this mean that we don't get an ice cream cone on this trip?' And he said "You're darned right that's what it means. Climb on board. We're heading for the hills. I can't pay for that plate glass window.' So there was no ice cream cone that trip." 610 Mike was the eldest son so he did most of the trips with his father and the other sons stayed home. 615 There was a butcher shop attached to the side of Gallup's General Store. The Schintz family bought meat from the neighbours. 625 Medical help was hard to get and serious injuries called for a trip to High River. Janet lost her last child after she fell on the river ice on the Highwood River. She recuperated in High River and Mike tended the house and took care of this brothers in her absence that winter. The closest doctor was in High River and a few times the physician actually waded across the river to visit the family when members of it were sick. Dr. Blaney and Dr. Sobey were two physicians that Mike remembers. 660 His only recollection of a trip to Calgary was to attend the Calgary Stampede. "Calgary was really a long way off in those days." Tape 1 Side 2

3 This side of the tape begins with the drive south and west towards the "Old Place." The bridge across the Highwood River was a narrow steel bridge and they usually crossed at a ford below the bridge instead of crossing the vehicular traffic bridge. 010 The first place through which we passed was the Hughes ranch. Walter and Dolly Hanson lived at this ranch when Mike lived in the area. They had a classic old house that is now gone. An old spring dried up in recent years. The Hughes now run a feedlot and it seems quite different than in the old days. 040 Polo was a popular sport and picnics were common. The Runciman's were neighbours, north across the river lived Joe and Josephine Bews. Bert Shepard lived at the TL Ranch. The people were closer as a community than they are today. 060 Snow usually came in early September and lasted until May. Spring was dramatic as the snow disappeared in the face of a dry, hot wind. The water springs dried up in recent years. The glaciers are receding on this side of the mountains and the climate is getting dryer. Most of the rivers on this side of the mountains ran at twice to three times the amount of water that runs in them now. The water table is going down. The vegetation is changing. Trees are making a return into much of the land. In the early days there were no deciduous trees, only coniferous. 100 There used to be a lake near the house and it had trees around it. Ralph Nichols broke land in the area in the 1940s, including the trees that protected the spring and the lake. The spring disappeared shortly thereafter. 120 At this point we stopped at the top of a hill. Buildings of Tom McMaster's ranch and Ralph Nichols' ranch are visible from this spot. Mike helped Tom with haying, fencing and taking cattle to the forest reserve. They used the Ings ford and Mike did not like it. Tom and Rhoda McMaster ran about 50 head of cattle. They hayed with a bull rake, with a team at each end of the rake. Tom had a hand made spur which came up from Texas on a cattle drive from the 1880s. A photo in his house showed Tom and others at the Bar U with a grizzly bear, with three of its feet roped by the men from the Bar U. Mike recovered the old spur from Tom's house and is keeping it for the historical interpretation of the Bar U. The scene from this hill is an uninterrupted view of many miles of mountains without roads, power lines or any other proof of human habitation. 185 We then stopped just east of the Schintz "Old Place." From this spot someone coming back on horseback or skis from a trip to get the mail or to Longview could see a light in the house at home. 205 At the front of the house we stopped and looked at the document which gave title for the property to Alexander McQueen Weir. The total acreage was 151 acres and it was dated June 25, The property was commonly known as Alecweirs, a contraction of the original owners names. The first family to live on the site were the Royals. Anne Royal did a pencil sketch of the original house in It shows a log structure with a roof that was angled in all four directions from a point in the middle. The Royal family changed the place with additions by 1923, doubling the size of the original structure and the current building is very much unchanged from the 1920s. Poplar trees grew up in the area since the turn of the century. Mike's tentative conclusion is that the lack of fires through the area allowed the deciduous tress to grow. There were no fires when he lived here. In the early years the track to the house was very wet, sometimes only just barely passable with a four wheel drive vehicle. 300 The last renovation to the house happened in 1939 when Ted Schintz moved the family to the house. He and a work crew renovated, replacing many of the bottom logs and installed a massive fireplace. A carpenter, Emil Kuck, was in charge of the renovations. The Kuck had the ranch upstream from the Stampede Ranch, near the forest reserve. 335

4 Story of an incident just the week before this interview when two juvenile delinquents started a fire in the fireplace. They made a bed close to the fire and almost lit the blankets. They left the next morning without putting out the fire and leaving a can of gasoline near the fire. 370 In Janet's bedroom, Mike described a sketch of the old Sibly cabin, now owned by Steve Hoar, a sculptor. George Pocaterra lived in the cabin for some years and his wife Norma. "George Pocaterra spent a year or so with the Stoney's when he first came to this country. He learned to live in their teepees, and to talk the language and obviously thought he was part indian. I guess a lot of those early guys did that kind of thing. But I can still remember that everything about George smelled decidedly smoky, like he'd just crawled out of a teepee even though his teepee creeping years were behind him at this point. He still kept up the smell. He wore a lot of buckskin and stuff like that. His wife Norma was an opera singer. I don't know whether it had always been her habit, or whether she got the habit of wearing a lot of heavy perfume as self defense, because of "Pokey's' smokey smell, but to spend an hour or two together with them in a warm room over a cup of tea was quite an experience for the nose. On the one hand, George smelled like he had just come out of a teepee and Norma smelled like she had just come from the opera. It was quite a mixture. 405 Ted eventually moved his studio from a room in the house to a building in the back yard to get away from the family noises. He did many sketches about horses and really liked the cowboy life. 415 From this point to the end of the tape the recorder was on and neither of us knew it. The information was off the record so I erased it. Tape 2 Side 1 To the southwest of the house was Raymond Patterson's Buffalo Head Ranch, in a line between their house and Mount Head. Their children, Janet and Allan, were chums of Mike's. Joe and Josephine Bews lived across to the northwest on Sullivan Creek. Billy Bews lives just across the river and the daughter Noreen. The Pocaterra's lived to the south. Janet Schintz did a lot of visiting. Ted was introverted and had a hard time meeting people and selling his paintings. Mike inherited a similar trait. 045 Visiting was common and everyone helped each other out. 050 When he visited the Patterson family, he visited the children mostly. They were raising cattle when he knew them. 060 Discussion about natives in the area. The Eden Valley Ranch was a private ranch but was later bought out by the federal government and some of the natives from the Morley reserve were moved onto it. The early generation of indians was quite mobile and some of them camped near the Schintz house. Some of the elderly came for tea and a smoke and were welcomed. Now they are not welcome and the relationship between the whites and the natives is not good. 085 The Schintz boys took schooling by correspondence. Mike remembers it as being very good. People in the country used the winter months to do the school work and in the summer did things outdoors. When he had to go to a school in town, he chose to go to Banff and take high school there. He knew Banff as the result of visiting Carl Rungius in his studio in Banff when his father went to visit the painter. Doris Livingston tied him for the highest exam mark upon graduation from Grade 9. The first day of Grade 10 in Banff he found himself seated across the aisle from her in the classroom. 115 After high school he joined the Warden Service. He took a job the summer of 1952 at the fire lookout at Mount Sarbach at the Saskatchewan River Crossing. He retired two weeks before this interview. He pushed for a formal training system for the park wardens but it is not in place yet.

5 150 The family did some camping but they never had time or money for a summer holiday. Family picnics by the river were a highlight. Ted had a teepee, primarily for use as a model for his paintings. 170 The Pocaterra's did not have much to do with Mike and the other children. The children crossed the river on their ponies, unsupervised, to visit with the Patterson children. The Schintz boys learned to swim when their father threw them into a deep pool, tied to a long stick in case he had to pull them out. He remembers no canoes or other watercraft on the Highwood River. 200 Discussion of the crossings of the Highwood in the area. 205 Religion did not play much of a role in the family life. Ted was a Roman Catholic but dropped it in the 1930s. They went to the Pekisko church once in a while. 220 Birthdays were memorable events. Tom McMaster came for a birthday party one day and ran footraces and swam races against the children and beat them all. Brandings and stampedes were special events and they sometimes went to help the neighbours. Ted worked as hired help for various farmers and ranchers in the area. 240 Mike remembered Cecil Margaret Baldwin, the nanny at the Patterson's, as tall, outgoing, British and very nice. "A very refreshing person and the kind of person you could take into the wilderness with you and get through." 255 Mail came once a week at most and in the winter perhaps only once per month. Mail was picked up at Johnny Fitzherbert's ranch. 265 Mike almost died once with a lung infection, and Ted got "a chill of some sort." The doctor came up to the place and gave them some medicine. 275 Once when a religious man came to visit, he tried to cross the river from the north by wading the river. Father Bowlen was his name. Ted warned him not to step on the big, flat stones but he stepped on them anyhow and he fell. "When he got back to his feet, the old man hollered at him 'See, I told you not to step on those big flat stones. If you'd listened to me instead of the Lord you would have got over here safe.'" 320 One person to interview is Bert Sheppard's right hand man, Warren. 335 Children played football, kicking a ball around. They also made bows and arrows. Bows were made of chokecherry and saskatoon wood. They also made slingshots. They rode horses and raced. 345 Ted hunted by necessity, not choice. He once wounded a deer in front of the house and then chased it in his stocking feet and did not get it. They mostly bought meat off the indians. They fished in the river only just a little bit. Flat Creek was good fishing. 385 End of interview.